Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has said he and Lewis Hamilton think about the former’s controversial Formula 1 title loss at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix “every day”.
It’s already been five years since Hamilton missed out on an eighth F1 title when controversial circumstances handed Max Verstappen his maiden championship.
That said, the wounds of that night are still fresh in the minds of Hamilton and his former boss Wolff.
“We haven’t got over it. I talked to Lewis about it yesterday,” Wolff told The Telegraph.
Both the title contenders had headed to Abu Dhabi equal on points. As the race trundled towards a conclusion, Hamilton was comfortably leading the Dutchman – albeit on more worn tyres than the Red Bull driver.
But with Williams’ Nicholas Latifi crashing, the Safety Car had been called out in the dying embers, putting Verstappen’s RB16B right on the gearbox of Hamilton’s W12.
In normal circumstances, and as per the regulations, the race should have ended behind the Safety Car – crowning an eight-time F1 champion for the first time.
However, the then-race director Michael Masi decided to interpret the rules in his own way, allowing only the lapped cars between Hamilton and Verstappen to unlap themselves.
On the very last lap, Verstappen made a daring yet decisive pass down the inside of the Mercedes driver at Turn 5, on the very last lap, clinching his maiden F1 title.
“I think about it every day and so does he. And it’s stayed with the team, too,” Wolff lamented.
“Both were deserving champions, but the referee made a bad call, to use a football analogy, and you can’t reverse it. The goal has been scored, the game is finished.”
How 2021 F1 debacle led to Horner’s Red Bull exit
In the aftermath of this debacle, Horner had maintained a sort of silence with respect to the controversy.
When asked if he had ever conceded this to Wolff, the Austrian categorically denied it. “Never. He was never able to admit it,” he revealed.
“I try to look at it from the other side – and from their point of view, they deserved to be world champions, they had had some incidents that were unfair to them throughout the season, and the outcome of that race is a fair representation of the performance levels during the season.”
Earlier this season, Horner was shown the exit door to the Milton Keynes-based team by the upper echelons of the company’s management.
Wolff surmised that a “gap in his personality”, evident from how he handled the 2021 controversy, might have slowly paved his way out after almost two decades with the team.
“Christian was never able to admit the same – that if it was the other way round and had happened to them that day, it would have been catastrophic, and he would have come up with all kinds of insults,” added Wolff.
“I think that the ability to be introspective or able to see the other side with some compassion is a total gap in his personality.
“It’s the sense of entitlement he has. And that bit him in the end, because he felt entitled to all the power, and Red Bull didn’t want to give him that power.”
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